Open source office suite takes on Microsoft Office & Google Docs

Maker of a Microsoft Exchange alternative builds a new document creation tool.

Written by / Courtesy of ArsTechnica

The productivity software market has several recent success stories, despite the continued dominance of Microsoft Office. Google Docs built up a huge user base by providing a Web-based alternative to Microsoft. And LibreOffice, a descendant of OpenOffice, is providing a strong challenge on the desktop side.

Now there is an office suite that combines these browser-based and open source approaches into one. It’s called OX Documents, and it comes courtesy of Open-Xchange, a company that previously built an alternative to the Microsoft Exchange e-mail server. OX Documents is in the early stages of development, with only a demo version of its word processor, OX Text, available beginning today.

A usable version of OX Text is scheduled to be released next month, with spreadsheet and presentation software coming later this year. OX Text will also be released in early April under the GNU General Public License 2 and Creative Commons. Open-Xchange will make money by selling a supported version to businesses.

Read more over at ArsTechnica.